Dereel update: on the road to recovery

On the 27th of March, a bushfire destroyed 16 houses in and around Dereel, southwest of Ballarat. All up, around 60 buildings were burned down and 125 properties were impacted. Since then, the community has been supporting those affected to rebuild their lives. Over the weekend, meetings were held to discuss what needs to be done next. Dereel local and CFA representative Kim Stanley-Eyles told ABC Local Radio's Steve Martin about how the community is recovering.

Ms Stanley-Eyles says representatives from the Department of Environment and Primary Industries and a CFA facilitator attended the meetings on the weekend to help discuss the recovery process with locals from Dereel and other affected areas, such as Corindhap.

She says the number one issue that was raised was the need for better communications, but not just mobile phone coverage and getting on the list of places to be connected to the National Broadband Network.

"Also just that social networking, the ability to communicate better as a community.

"Recognising that not everybody wants to be involved with their neighbours, but also being able to recognise that there are ways to get better information to people so if things are happening in the community people actually know about it."

Ms Stanley-Eyles says it was exciting to hear people are wanting to build up the community, with more events and get-togethers.

"A lot of people have realised during the fire that they had isolated themselves, and that now there's an opportunity to be really built into the community, and actually strengthen the abilities of communities to work together."

She says there are still working parties going out to assist those who were affected by the fire.

"We still have people in the community who have still not worked out whether they want to move back, and some people who have moved heaven and earth to move back despite the fact they don't actually have a home to come back to yet, because they really want to be part of the community."

Ms Stanley-Eyles says the recovery process will be ongoing, as people will rebuild at different paces.

"We've decided it's 'strengthening', because then there's no end to it."

She says the Golden Plains Shire is helping to get the word out to all members of the community by sending out a regular newsletter.

"We're finding a lot of people aren't socialising yet, they're still receiving this newsletter so they still have the ability to at least know what's going on so they can choose the time when they would like to be engaged."